From A. and B.Strugatsky
It is the end 21st and beginning of the 22nd Century. People on Earth have united and built a super civilisation. They have reached out to the stars and found both advanced civilisations and less advanced civilisations. They have launched into quietly helping less advanced humanoid civilisation (it is done by people called progressors who are trained to adapt and survive in medieval, industrial, etc. civilisations. Humans have also become aware of a super civilisation called Wanderers that seems to be infinitely old, always moving as if the Universe was their home and leaving many artefacts in many places.
One of them was Sarcophagus that was, in fact, a sophisticated incubator containing 13 fertilized, but latent human egg cells. The foundlings were born on October 6, 2138 with no apparent difference from normal human children on Earth. A difference appeared only in 2149, when symbols identical to those on the discs in the Sarcophagus appeared on the right elbows of all 11-years-old foundling. The disks became known as "detonators" and reserachers feared that they would trigger some inhuman aspects in foundlings.
Knowledgeable humans were scared to death of these people. The fear was that they would not be humans after all. The first foundling to get the detonator's mark on his skin returned to Earth under suspicious circumstances and tried to obtain his corresponding detonator. Since he provided no information on how he found out about the discs or what he was going to do with them and ignored multiple warnings form officials, one of them shot him dead millimeters before he could reach his “detonator”.
While humans keep interfering and assisting younger civilisations they keep searching for "Unexplained Events" what they suspect is interference of Wanderers with Earth’s civilisation. Their investigation of a series of events leads them to believe that they are witnesses to a new action by the Wanderers.
However, instead of finding Wanderers, investigators found that humanity itself was undergoing change. One in every 100,000 people is not a human any more. They are Ludens - born human, but possess latent mental powers far beyond those of normal humans. They view themselves as a distinct race, and claim to have different interests from humanity at large.
Two investigators - Kammerer and Glumov unmask the Ludens, and they are made public in what would later be called "The Great Revelation." At the end of the novel, the Ludens discover that Glumov himself has the capacity to become a Luden, and Glumov must decide whether or not to join their race. Glumov at first states that to join the Ludens would be a betrayal of his family, friends, and civilisation, but then…he changes and visits Earth less and less…
Thus ended the fictional world of communism, warmth and security created by brothers Strugratsky…humanity grew out of itself and leaped to where majority of humans could not reach out even with their imagination.
